There’s a push among educators in Western Pennsylvania to bring more social workers into school systems.

Administrators at the Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV, which serves all of Butler County’s public districts in its 27-county coverage area, say they’ve been working with school districts recently to supply a demand for school social workers. The regional group works to equip school districts with niche resources and programs in areas such as special education or behavioral health.

Richael Fertig, supervisor of special education for the MIU, said it’s begun advertising a job for a social worker, but it’s still lining up what school districts are willing to split the costs of a contract. It’s clear the area needs it, she said.

“What our districts are reporting to us is that students are coming up with mental health concerns as well as behavioral concerns,” Fertig said. “This area, for us as an IU, is expanding dramatically.”

The MIU already has a team dedicated to social emotional learning services, but its social work resources have been limited.

Fertig supervises the MIU’s only social worker, Bryda Drumm.

Much of Drumm’s time, she said, is spent training staff within schools on topics such as suicide prevention, child abuse prevention, human trafficking, or mandated reporting requirements. She’s also a liaison between families and services like subsidized medical help or Social Security.

“I do everything from take phone calls from parents who need links to resources within their community to home visits,” Drumm said.

But a common need for social workers whose day-to-day jobs are to work inside school buildings — not just visit them for staff trainings — is becoming clear, Drumm said.

“In my opinion, we must address the social emotional needs of children as well as the academic,” she said.

Drumm sees in the region’s schools and hears from the region’s teachers stories about trauma.

She thinks drugs are one contributing factor.

“I think we’ve seen an increase in families that are affected by drug use,” Drumm said. “It really boils down to trauma. There’s an increase in children with some kind of trauma in their life.”

The director of special education at the MIU is Melissa Wyllie. She took the job in 2015 and immediately was tasked with overseeing the closure of the Clarence C. Brown Education Center in Butler, a community special education building that served the area. Finances were behind its closure, and the county’s schools felt the weight of its loss immediately, Wyllie said.

Many localized replacements have sprung up over the years to fill those needs like the Butler Area School District’s Center Avenue Community School. And the MIU itself still does its best supplying districts with the tools they need.

But because there’s an uptick in trauma-related behavioral problems, many schools in the region remain underequipped, Wyllie said.

“School districts aren’t able to handle the type of things these students are going through,” Wyllie said.

To illustrate her point, Wyllie mentioned that she recently attended a meeting to talk about getting aid into preschool programs, triggered by an increase in suspensions and expulsions of children, age 3 to 5.

“Some of the stuff I hear from 3-year-olds,” Wyllie said. “It makes the hair stand up on my arms.”

MIU staff believe places like Butler County are going to start seeing more and more social workers brought into schools to address the growing need.

The Butler School Board, for instance, plans on hiring social workers this year and even raised its tax levy in part to do so.

The MIU hopes to be able to pair up groups of smaller, rural school districts to split the costs of a social worker and share the individual’s time.

Drumm said she can’t advocate enough for the idea.

“We need more school social workers,” Drumm said. “Our students need more social emotional learning. Anything I can do or say to get things moving in that direction is wonderful.”